The annual solar subsidy fee paid by householders hit a record $128 this financial year to fund the $170 million surge in the scheme’s total cost, new figures show.Source: Supplied

HOUSEHOLDS have been saddled with another $30 rise in average annual bills, driven by the 150,000-plus homeowners cashing in on the Government’s lucrative solar rebate scheme.

The annual solar subsidy fee paid by householders hit a record $128 this financial year to fund the $170 million surge in the scheme’s total cost, new figures show.

Welfare groups have called for greater equity in energy costs for low-income earners and renters and urged the Government to review the scheme.

The Government scheme pays solar panel owners a generous rebate for the electricity they produce and the money is recovered from all electricity customers via network charges.

By the time rebate payments end in 2028, the scheme will have cost energy customers $1.7 billion in total — or more than $1100 per household.

The cost blowout is being blamed on more and bigger solar panel systems being taken up than expected when the scheme was introduced six years ago.

The cost of an average-sized home solar system was more than $20,000 when the scheme was introduced but it has since more than halved, according to Zen Energy founder Richard Turner.

He claimed the surge in solar power now being fed into the network during peak summer demand periods was helping to keep electricity prices down.

A staggering 158,000 homeowners have installed solar panel’s to cash in on the rebate — almost 20 times more than the 8000 predicted when former Premier Mike Rann launched the scheme in 2008.

The Government scheme was designed to encourage the take-up of solar energy, support the solar industry and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But critics say the scheme is an unfair burden on low income householders, who cannot afford to spend thousands of dollars installing solar panels but still have to pay a fee to fund the rebates for those who can.

Welfare agencies said renters and those on low incomes were exposed to the “unfairness’’ of the scheme.

“They are the ones losing out and the Government needs to find a solution for this,’’ Uniting Communities advocacy manager Mark Henley said.

“Either low-income earners and renters should not be paying the same amount in charges or the Government should find another way to provide them with the benefits of accessing solar power.’’

The SA Council of Social Services said the burden on lower income households should be addressed.

“The Government could increase the energy concession payment to account for this solar subsidy fee,’’ the council’s executive director Ross Womersley said.

State Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said the Government “is conscious that the costs of the Scheme impact on all electricity customers’’ and that changes were made “in 2011 to limit the amount each customer could benefit from the scheme and to close the scheme to new entrants’’.

“Suburbs analysis undertaken in 2011 indicated that the areas with the highest number of installations were not the most advantaged socio-economic areas in the State,’’ he said.

Instead, he said the scheme had proven “popular with retirees and holiday makers’’.

The scheme has a controversial history, including numerous changes to stop people exploiting it and reduce its popularity to rein in future rebate costs.

In 2008, homeowners with solar systems were initially offered 44 cents per kilowatt hour for the energy generated by their PV panels, with payments locked in until 2028.

The generous rebate lured almost 100,000 householders to sign up to the scheme — with some also putting systems on their holiday homes to generate up to $5 a day in rebates while unoccupied.

The scheme was subsequently limited to one rebate per person and those joining the it after September 2011 could only qualify for a 16c per kilowatt hour rebate, payable until 2016.

More than 60,000 residents took up this new offer before it ended in September last year.

It was the unexpected rush to beat this deadline which contributed to the cost blowout, SA Power Networks, which administer the scheme under Government legislation, said.

It said the cost of the scheme had jumped since last year because “more customers installed systems’’ than expected, “systems were larger than forecast’’ and as a result more solar energy was “exported to the grid than anticipated’’.

SA Power Networks now forecast householder’s annual solar subsidy fee — which increased from $98 to $128 this financial year — will fall with the end of the 16c scheme in September 2016 and eventually plateau at $70 a year until 2028.

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